That the substance that the universe is composed of is essentially consciousness? — Watchmaker


That's what I think, yes. — bert1


I wonder what the motivation is? I mean, I look around at the world, and I see that some things are conscious, you and me, my dog, and I see that the mechanisms for consciousness are in our brains, we can switch them off and on. I see that some things are not conscious, rocks, dead people or dogs. I think bacteria for example aren't conscious (because we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes), but they do have something which is a prerequisite for consciousness, they are individuals, separated from their environment.

This stuff is surely super-important?! Whether we ourselves and other items are conscious or not really matters to us.

So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious. — Daemon

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I wonder what the motivation is? — Daemon


There are a number of different motivations depending on the panpsychist, I think. Some panpsychists take a very conceptual approach think that it impossible to make sense of the idea of the emergence of consciousness because the concept does not seem to admit of degree. Goff and Antony develop this line of reasoning.

Panpsychism can be motivated by an examination of the various binding problems, when we look for candidates in nature that can fulfil the binding function, we can see that space relates its contents, and fields are also present at every point in space, so perhaps consciousness is a property of space. This has some intuitive appeal for me as it fits with the phenomonology quite well.

Some panpsychists do think that consciousness emerges, and is reducible to a kind of function, it's just that this function occurs in everything, so consciousness is also in everything. The IIT is an example of this. The IIT is a very different kind of panpsychism, and very differently theoretically motivated.

Some panpsychists are motivated by idealism. Timothy Sprigge is one of these. If you think of Berkeley, but take out the role God plays in maintaining the existence of the external world of ideas, and substitute panpsychism - everything exists in a vast web of mutually perceiving and mutually defining subjects, then I think that is close to Sprigge's view.

Some panpsychists are no doubt motivated by spiritual views, they have already come to the conclusion that consciousness is present at the start of everything, and think that everything after that point will therefore also be conscious, as all subsequent existing things are modifications of the original conscious substance.

One can also come to panpsychism by an examination of psychological causation and the problem of overdetermination - the only causation we actually know happens is psychological - we cause out arm to go up, for example. But this seems to compete with other, physical, causal accounts involving neurons firing. One way out of this puzzle is to reduce physical causation to psychological, and assert that what we normally refer to as forces in the world are actually wills, and the behaviour of matter is determined by how it feels. The slogans might be 'matter does what it does because of how it feels' and 'how matter feels is determined by what it does'.

Panpsychism is attractively monistic. If the basic starting properties in a typical physical explanation of the world (e.g. mass, charge, spin, extension, whatever the latest list is) are not enough to explain everything, one way to fix this is to add a starting property, namely consciousness, especially if the alternatives are more theoretically problematic.

Another way to come at panpsychism is by process of elimination. Consciousness either (a) doesn't exist, or at least isn't what it appears to be (eliminativism) (b) emerged (was around at the start and arrived on the scene later - this is the majority view I suspect), or (c) was here from the start and exists in everything. Pick the least problematic option. This is the Churchill approach - "Panpsychism is the worst theory of conciousness apart from all the others."

And there's more motivations, and many sub-variants...

I mean, I look around at the world, and I see that some things are conscious, you and me, my dog, and I see that the mechanisms for consciousness are in our brains, we can switch them off and on.

Well, maybe. When we switch consciousness on and off, are we switching consciousness? Or are we switching identity on and off? How could we tell the difference between non-consciousness and non-existence, phenomenologically?

I see that some things are not conscious, rocks, dead people or dogs.


I understand your intuitive starting point. But can these distinctions be maintained? Philosophers will want answers to the following questions: What are you seeing exactly? And what follows from that about consciousness? Why aren't people and dogs conscious? How do you know? What constitutes evidence for consicousness?

I think bacteria for example aren't conscious (because we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes), but they do have something which is a prerequisite for consciousness, they are individuals, separated from their environment.


Well, that's very interesting. You have the start of a theory, or at least line of enquiry. I would question whether we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes - when we get to the level of forces, we end up saying 'that's just what happens'. But if those forces are wills, we can go, perhaps, one step further into something we can understand - 'because that's what they will'. Conversely, lets take humans. If we can explain bacterial behaviour in terms of non-conscious processes, why can't we do the same with humans? Maybe Apo has an answer - that human behaviour cannot be explained in the kind of bottom-up way that perhaps bacterial behaviour can. And I suspect Apo will say the same about bacteria - there is top down stuff going on there too which is necessary to understand bacterial behaviour. But even if he is right, I don't see how that entails consciousness.

This stuff is surely super-important?! Whether we ourselves and other items are conscious or not really matters to us.


Indeed.

So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious.


I don't think panpsychists does lose the distinction. I can conceive of a rock that isn't conscious. the concept of non-consciousness still has meaning, even if I think that nothing is in fact non-conscious.